Second Quantization for Nonorthogonal Orbitals

In the preceding treatment we became familiar with the basic notions of second quantization. By this section we begin to discuss less standard chapters of this theory. These subjects are not as widely documented in the literature, therefore the interested reader should consult mostly with original papers rather than books, though review articles are available in some cases. 

An important generalization of the second quantized formalism is the extension to the case of a nonorthogonal basis set. Such an extension is inevitable if one is aiming to develop a theory within the original AO basis, or if one is studying the interaction between different molecules whose wave functions (or MOs) mutually overlap. In what follows we shall review this theory in detail, since, up to our knowledge, no such review has yet been published. 

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Contents Introduction. - Concept of Creation and Annihilation Operators. -Particle Number Operators. - Second Quantized Representation of Quantum Mechanical Operators. - Evaluation of Matrix Elements. - Advantages of Second Quantization. - Illustrative Examples. - Density Matrices. -Connection to Bra and Ket Formalism. - Using Spatial Orbitals. - Some Model Hamiltonians in Second Quantized Form. - The Brillouin Theorem. -Many-Body Perturbation Theory. -Second Quantization for Nonorthogonal Orbitals. - Second Quantization and Hellmann-Feynman Theorem. - Inter-molecular Interactions. - Quasiparticle Transformations. Miscellaneous Topics Related to Second Quantization -Problem Solutions. - References -Index. 

The integrals are calculated in terms of the atomic orbitals (AOs) and are subsequently transformed to the orthonormal basis. In some cases it may be more efficient to evaluate the expressions in the nonorthogonal AO basis. We return to this problem when we consider the calculation of the individual geometry derivatives. For the time being we assume that the Hamiltonian is expressed in the orthonormal molecular orbital (MO) basis. The second-quantized Hamiltonian [Eq. (8)] is a projection of the full Hamiltonian onto the space spanned by the molecular orbitals p, i.e., the space in which calculations are carried out. 

There have been a number of means proposed for circumventing superposition error. Mayer et al. advocated what they term a chemical Hamiltonian approach, which separates the physical part of this operator from that responsible for BSSE using a nonorthogonal second quantization formalism. However, the physical Hamiltonian is no longer variational and the wavefunction is constructed from orthonormalized molecular spin orbitals. Surjan et al. " further developed this approach and performed pilot applications on small complexes. 

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